Regular readers will notice I’ve updated the design of the web site. This is to make it more usable on very different screen sizes and devices we have in 2015 compared to 2008 when I first designed it.

We still have a few rough spots and there will be inevitably be a few busts in the layout. If you spot anything, please comment below and let me know what the problem is and what web browser / device you are using.

We’ve seen Jamie Bell on-screen as everything from boy reporter to Roman soldier, but I never thought I’d see him as “The Thing” from the Fantastic Four. I’m sure he’s been pressed with loads of questions about his role in the next big Marvel blockbuster-but the main thing French folks from Premiere want to know, of course, is when (or even if) Tintin 2 is going to happen. Jamie Bell was hesitant to give a definite answer:

“I’m crossing my fingers that filming will start towards the end of next year. But that’s not 100 percent confirmed.”

Still, he was confident that the film is still going to happen:

“The project is still current.”

The projects that were clogging Jackson’s schedule are finally out of the way, so hopefully Jamie’s projected timeframe comes true. If it does though, that 2016 IMDB date will have to be pushed back at least a year, in the very best of scenarios.

This means that at least 6 years will pass between the first film’s release and Tintin 2. I can’t speak for the rest of the world, but I hope they do a much better job marketing the film in the US this time around-what’s left of the film’s memory in the States is quickly fading.

Sorry, fellow Tintin fans. I haven’t posted here in about a year! But I haven’t been dead-just waiting. The truth is, there hasn’t been much word about Tintin 2 for ages.

But now, though I’m not sure where it came from, we have a date. The IMDB page for Tintin 2 (which still lists the next title as “Prisoners of the Sun”) sets the release date as December 16th, 2016.

Regardless of what stories are in the next film, 2016 may be a realistic release date. I hope it isn’t a bit early, since it doesn’t look like work on this film has gone very far at all. But at last Jackson has Middle Earth out of the way. Tintin 2 looks like a logical next project for him to take on-not only has he been looking forward to this project, but it is sure to make money around the world. I just hope they market it better in the US than they did the last film.

What do you guys think? Can we trust this date? Or is it as uncertain as the title? Personally, I think Prisoners of the Sun would be a great choice for Tintin 2. But we were led to believe years ago that the film would be a different story, and I still haven’t found any reliable source correcting that idea.

There’s still no word on what’s actually in it, but Horowitz has finished the script for Tintin 2. It’s good news, but hardly big news. In fact, to paraphrase Horowitz’s remark in his recent interview with Daily Mail, he basically just said “Oh, by the way, I’ve finished Tintin.”

What I find much more interesting is what he has to say about Tintin:

I’ve lived here with my wife Jill and our sons Nicholas and Cassian for eight years, and my den, perched high over the city, gives me a panoramic view of London which inspires me. But I was initially inspired to write by Tintin. I’ve got all the books, and I particularly love this Tintin rocket, which I picked up from a shop in Covent Garden, as it’s so iconic. It’s a constant reminder of my childhood hero. Incidentally, I’ve just finished writing the new Tintin film for Steven Spielberg.

Personally, I loved the Alex Rider series (which is about a boy spy) and The House of Silk, a new Sherlock Holmes novel. Essentially, if you were to blend Alex and Sherlock together, you’d wind up with something quite like Tintin. So when I found out Horowitz was chosen to write the script, I thought “Oh, the choice makes perfect sense.”

But knowing Tintin has inspired Horowitz from an early age is refreshing, and reminds me of what Peter Jackson has said of his own childhood. Clearly these men hold Hergé’s characters and adventures with the utmost respect: Tintin helped make them who they are today. I look forward to knowing more details, but no matter what happens I am confident in the team making this film. While The Secret of the Unicorn is a tough act to follow, I think Tintin 2 has the potential to surpass it.

It remains to be seen how involved Spielberg is with this project. The plan as we know it is for Spielberg to produce and Jackson to direct. I don’t think we should read anything into what Horowitz said that would imply things have changed.

By the way, Horowitz, I’ve always wanted one of those fancy rockets. I don’t know what I’m more likely to live to see first: the day Tintin 2 hits theaters, or the day one of those rockets goes on sale. Ah, a guy can dream…

Back in October, we received news that Moulinsart is planning to release a brand new adventure to stop all things Tintin from going into the public domain. But since that won’t happen until 2052, the news seemed quite premature. As controversial as the idea might be, the real debate will more likely be had by our children, or even our grandchildren.

But after a recent debate at Angouleme, it seems Nick Rodwell and friends might not think it’s a bad idea to make another Tintin album as soon as possible. In an interesting article on the subject, Bleeding Cool wraps up their news on the subject with this paragraph:

They seem to be preparing the way for a collection of lot of different creators doing their take on Tintin, along the model of Dupuis’ “Spirou by” series. And this kind of event is the first step along that path. Others brought into doubt that Herge did, indeed, request no more Tintin after his death. And others that the issue comes down to how you can separate Tintin work by Herge and work by future creators sufficiently, so that there is no “volume 25″. A well as Asterix, the example of Blake & Mortimer being successfully revived after the author’s death to critical acclaim was mentioned. And Rodell mentioned that the topic comes up constantly at home with his wife.

The debate itself, held in French, also hosted Benoit Mouchart (the editorial director of Casterman) and Renaud Montini, an intellectual property lawyer. I have a decent level of French, but the video is over an hour long, and I’m not sure if the French Youtube captions even match. I haven’t tried to watch it, but if any French speakers out there would like to (Thierry?), be my guest. Perhaps you could shed some light on any other details Bleeding Cool didn’t mention.

My understanding is that despite all this talk, much of it may just be talk. Without the permission of Hergé’s widow, I don’t think these plans will come to anything. But if she ever changes her mind, it’s feasible we could see new Tintin adventures on the shelves quite soon.

I’m not sure how I feel about this. It is one thing to transfer Tintin from the page to the screen, and even in Hergé’s day this was done with a fair amount of artistic license. It’s another thing to continue the original adventures in their original medium, some fifty years after the originals ended. Even if Hergé had wanted the strip to be be continued after his death, I’m not convinced this would be a good idea now.

There’s a huge difference between continuing a strip like Asterix and continuing Tintin. For one thing, one of the most interesting things about Tintin is how he took readers all around the world, dealing with current events as he went. From a literary perspective, Hergé practically summed up all of the 20th century into just under 25 albums. The strip itself is timeless, but it was heavily influenced by what was going on at the moment.

Give me your input, fans. If new Tintin albums do come out, would you like to see them set in the present day, having Tintin deal with the internet, the European Union, or even the wars going on in the Middle East today? Would you like to first see what Tintin was doing in the rest of the 80’s and the 90’s? Or would you rather that we lose that connection with Tintin living in our present day, and instead have more adventures set in some hard-to-pin-down time frame between the fifties and eighties?

Back on Tintin’s birthday I posted about a new store selling Tintin merchandise in Madrid. As it turns out I was able to visit the store that same day, but I haven’t gotten around to posting about it until now.

First of all, I apologize for what was a bit of false advertising on my part. The store is not really a “Tintin Shop” like the ones in Brussels or London. It’s not part of the “Boutique Tintin” chain. It is apparently officially licensed to sell Tintin stuff, but differs from those other stores on a number of points. For one thing, it is much smaller-(even the Tintin Shops aren’t that big, but this could have fit in my bedroom). What surprised me most (and what none of the newspaper articles I read mentioned) was that it does not sell Tintin items exclusively.

Small as it may be, the left side of the single room sells electronics, while the right side of the shop displays Tintin things. Honestly, there was a bit of a dichotomy between the expensive, classy merchandise and the tacky cell phone cases and computer parts. The store is run by a partnership of two friends (/family members?) who co-run the place. It didn’t help that the sudden burst of publicity had almost left the poor lady with nothing Tintin to sell, as fans had rushed in and bought everything they could grab. She still had a good amount of things on the shelves, but hardly a store full of them.

But after taking the time to go downtown and finding the store, I didn’t care about these “issues.” Besides, the Tintin merchandise there was was neatly arranged and ready for us to check it out. I came with a young friend of mine who is just discovering Tintin. It is fun to watch children begin to love Tintin, unaware of the “sophisticated” world of grown-ups that have turned him into their hobby.

The owner let me take some pictures of the clean part of the store, which was very nice, and both my friend and I bought some very tiny figurines, my friend’s of Tintin sitting with a bowl of butter tea from Tintin in Tibet. The owner told us a funny story about how she had traveled to Tibet and had gotten all excited that she would finally try butter tea, only to discover it was one of the most disgusting things she had ever drank.

I hope to come back again soon when they have more things in stock, but I also bought a cool “Explorers on the Moon” themed sticker book. That two part series is my favorite of all the books, so I have a thing for picking up merchandise from those stories. Though intended for children, I realized the book would make a great backdrop for some of my other figures, and for just four-fifty or something like that, the book was a steal.

By sheer coincidence, when I came downtown it was cheaper to park outside the city and take the metro downtown. And just streets away from where we parked is Tintin y Milu street, the only street I know of named after Tintin and Snowy (though I wouldn’t be surprised if Belgium has one somewhere). I had to stop and show it to my friend, who was excited about it.

It may be small, but I think the “Estrella Misteriosa” store downtown will turn out to be one of Madrid’s hidden treasures. I hope it stays in business through the tough financial times.

It is interesting to think that today, Tintin is ten years older than Hergé was at his death. Hergé’s son has not only outlived him, but grown a decade older than him.

I feel the urge to celebrate somehow. How should one celebrate Tintin turning quatre-vingt-cinq? Maybe I’ll bake a cake. I at least hope to pull out some albums, play my Tintin Mille Bornes, and rewatch the Tintin movie one more time.

But more than anything I would love to visit Madrid’s new Tintin shop, which Google tells me opened just this past week. I have now been to the official Tintin shops in Brussels and London, so when I found out one was in Madrid, I was ecstatic. I understand most of you English readers aren’t in Madrid, or even Spain, but in case you ever drop by, this is their website: http://www.laestrellamisteriosa.com/mapa.html (not much at the moment, but they are still pretty new).

The shop is interestingly called “La Estrella Misteriosa” (literally, “The Mysterious Star,” which is actually the literal translation of what we know as “The Shooting Star” in English). I assume they chose not to call their store “The Tintin Shop” or something similar to avoid conflict with the other shop in Barcelona, which I have not been to. However, this one, if I cannot visit today, I will soon.

What about you, Tintinophiles? Doing anything special for Tintin’s birthday? As always, feel free to leave a comment. We’re happy to hear from you.

One of the annoying things about posting Tintin 2 details is that, honestly, there aren’t many details. It’s hard to be dogmatic on when and what will happen exactly, and even the occasional pieces of “news” force me to be vague. The truth about Tintin 2 is that it’s still pretty far away.

But at least now Peter Jackson’s given us a short interview on why that is, though we all knew the answer already: the Hobbit has simply taken up most of his time and energy. In a recent interview with Bad Taste, Jackson told us:

“As soon as I’m free of ‘The Hobbit,’ I’ll be going back into doing ‘Tintin.’ It was held up by The Hobbit, but we have every intention of doing another Tintin movie and it’s just waiting on me to be done with these ‘Hobbit’ movies.”

You can see the whole video here:

IMDB now currently has a release date for December 16th, 2016. I’m not sure where that info came from.

So…it looks like the movie will come out almost exactly 2 years from now. We had hoped for better, but at least the project is still on the table, and Jackson seems excited about getting involved with the project, once he finishes with those “pesky Hobbit movies.” Actually, I thought the first Hobbit movie was absolutely fantastic and am seriously looking forward to seeing the other two movies when they come out. It’ll be a good way to pass the time until Tintin 2.

2016 isn’t so bad. Instead we could have been waiting until…oh,I don’t know, say, 2052…

When I first read the news story I thought it was a joke. But as sure as today’s October 21st, not April 1st, these news come in all seriousness. Casterman and Moulinsart plan on creating one more Tintin album, and its release date is set for 2052. Wait, what?

But how? Why? Whatever happened to respecting Hergé’s wishes that nobody continue with the series? Well, I’ll post the article straight from Le Soir (or rather…from Le Soir through Google Translate. I’ve edited parts for clarity only, since I don’t know too much French, but, only at times, I know a little more than Google). I didn’t fix everything, and some of the verb tenses are hard to straighten out, but you guys are smart…You’ll get the point.

In an exclusive interview with the Paris daily “Le Soir” and “The World” with Charlotte Gallimard, new director of Casterman and Mouchart Benedict, the new editorial director of the Franco-Belgian publishing house, Nick Rodwell, the head of Moulinsart, unleashed a scoop.In 2052, Casterman will be allowed to publish a new Tintin adventure, a year before Hergé’s work falls into the public domain.Nick Rodwell said that the mission of the heirs of the master of the clear line is to “protect and promote” his work. With this in mind, a new album will be the only way for him to prevent Bashibazoucks from making Tintin into everything and anything, 70 years after the author’s death.

During the meeting, Benedict and Charlotte Gallimard Mouchart also revealed the signing of a sponsorship agreement of the Hergé Museum in Louvain-la-Neuve and the publishing next year of the “Secrets of Cigars of the Pharaoh ” by Casterman. This album celebrates 80 years of presence in the catalog Tintin Casterman. He will tell in pictures redesigned by Hergé Studios adventure published in black and white in 1934 to create the color album that we know today. Finally, Moulinsart and Casterman are also considering making a movie or a cartoon Jo Zette.

I’ll be honest, Tintinologists. I have very mixed feelings about this, but they are turning more and more negative the more I think about it. Hergé didn’t want anybody making more Tintin albums. Tintin was his child, and for many years, Tintin literally took over the man’s life. To continue the series, especially so many years after his death, and still consider it official is really a bizarre and kind of uncomfortable idea. I agree with their intentions: I don’t want counterfeit Tintin’s to sprout up and turn Tintin into “everything and anything” either. But really, if that happens after whenever Tintin would become public domain, who does that really harm?

Such publications would fool nobody, especially 70 years after Hergé’s death. And honestly, as much as Moulinsart and whoever else wants to stop it, people already make Tintin into everything and anything. They just don’t easily get away with selling it. And while sure, some cases are “Tintin and Thailand”, many others are just innocent fan art. But nobody’s trying to say that those are official, “canonical” Tintin albums.

But Casterman and Moulinsart have everything to lose financially if they can no longer control who sells and markets Tintin. So in an effort to protect Hergé’s last wishes, they actually have to break them.

What I fear is that this may not become just “one extra album.” Fans will want more. Kids will want more. Compared with other comic books, 24 albums is a small number of adventures. And if the moneymakers can break the rules once, they may just break them again. I can just hear people ask, “After all the work it will take to produce that one super special album, why not take advantage of whoever creates it and let him make a few more?”

But for better or for worse, a lot can happen in forty years. Forty years ago Hergé was still making Tintin albums! What do you think, fans? Is this a good idea? Should we just wait it out and see? I wouldn’t expect too much news on this for a long, long time.

On the plus side, I think a Jo, Zette and Jocko movie would actually be a really good idea.